Multidimensional Measures of Child Poverty

1. Multidimensional Measures of Child Poverty David Gordon, Michelle Irving, Shailen Nandy, & Peter Townsend UNDP International Poverty Centre Conference The Many Dimensions of Poverty Brasilia 29th-31st August 2005

2. Child Poverty: the Rhetoric -No More Hungry Children? ...within a decade no child will go to bed hungry, [...] no family will fear for its next days bread and [...] no human being's future and well being will be stunted by malnutrition. Henry Kissinger, First World Food Conference, Rome 1974

3. Child Poverty: The Reality Age at death by age group, 1990-1995 Source: The State of the World Population 1998

4. “The world's biggest killer and the greatest cause of ill healthand suffering across the globe is listed almost at the end ofthe International Classification of Diseases.It is given codeZ59.5 -- extreme poverty. World Health Organisation (1995) Seven out of 10 childhood deaths in developing countries can be attributed to just five main causes - or a combination of them: pneumonia, diarrhoea, measles, malaria and malnutrition.Around the world, three out of four children seen by health services are suffering from at least one of these conditions. World Health Organisation (1996; 1998).

5. Children’s Rights & Child Poverty The framework provided by international human rights conventions, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child provides a helpful instrument for poverty measurement. Firstly, these conventions have been signed by every country in the World and so can be considered to embody universal values and aspirations. Secondly as Mary Robinson (former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) has argued “a human rights approach adds value because it provides a normative framework of obligations that has the legal power to render governments accountable”. Finally, a human rights approach shifts the emphasis in debates about poverty away from personal failure to a focus on the failure of macro-economic structures and policies created by nation states and international bodies (WTO, World Bank, IMF etc.). Hence, poverty in this context is no longer described as a ‘social problem’ but a ‘violation’.

6. Multidimensional Definitions of Absolute and Overall Poverty After the World Summit on Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995, 117 countries adopted a declaration and programme of action which included commitments to eradicate “absolute” and reduce “overall” poverty. Absolute poverty was defined as "a condition characterised by severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education and information. It depends not only on income but also on access to services." Overall poverty takes various forms, including "lack of income and productive resources to ensure sustainable livelihoods; hunger and malnutrition; ill health; limited or lack of access to education and other basic services; increased morbidity and mortality from illness; homelessness and inadequate housing; unsafe environments and social discrimination and exclusion. It is also characterised by lack of participation in decision-making and in civil, social and cultural life. It occurs in all countries: as mass poverty in many developing countries, pockets of poverty amid wealth in developed countries, loss of livelihoods as a result of economic recession, sudden poverty as a result of disaster or conflict, the poverty of low-wage workers, and the utter destitution of people who fall outside family support systems, social institutions and safety nets. (UN, 1995)

7. Measuring Multidimensional Child Poverty Income is important but access to public goods – safe water supply, roads, healthcare, education – is of equal or greater importance, particularly in developing countries. There is a need to look beyond income and consumption expenditure poverty measures and at both the effects of low family income on children and the effects of inadequate service provision for children. It is a lack of investment in good quality education, health and other public services in many parts of the world that is as significant a cause of child poverty as low family incomes

8. Deprivation can be conceptualised as a continuum which ranges from no deprivation through mild, moderate and severe deprivation to extreme deprivation. Continuum of deprivation In order to measure absolute poverty amongst children, it is necessary to define the threshold measures of severe deprivation of basic human need for: • food • safe drinking water • sanitation facilities • health • shelter • education • information • access to service

9. Operational Definitions of Severe Deprivation of Basic Human Need for Children • Severe Food Deprivation– severely malnourished children whose highest and weights were more than 3 Standard Deviations below the median of the international reference population e.g. severe anthropometric failure. • Severe Water Deprivation - children who only had access to surface water (e.g. rivers) for drinking or who lived in households where the nearest source of water was more than 15 minutes away (e.g. indicators of severe deprivation of water quality or quantity). • Severe Deprivation of Sanitation Facilities – children who had no access to a toilet of any kind in the vicinity of their dwelling, e.g. no private or communal toilets or latrines. • Severe Health Deprivation – children who had not been immunised against any diseases or young children who had a recent illness and had not received any medical advice or treatment. • Severe Shelter Deprivation – children in dwellings with more than five people per room (severe overcrowding) or with no flooring material (e.g. a mud floor). • Severe Education Deprivation – children aged between 7 and 18 who had never been to school and were not currently attending school (e.g. no professional education of any kind). • Severe Information Deprivation – children aged between 3 and 18 with no access to newspapers, radio or television or computers or phones at home. • Severe Deprivation of Access to Basic Services – children living 20 kilometres or more from any type of school or 50 kilometres or more from any medical facility with doctors. Unfortunately, this kind of information was only available for a few countries so it has not been possible to construct accurate regional estimates of severe deprivation of access to basic services.

10. Child Poverty in the World Over one billion children – half the children in the world- suffer from severe deprivation of basic human need and 30% (650 million)suffer from absolute poverty (two or more severe deprivations). ‘severe deprivation of basic human need’ are those circumstances that are highly likely to have serious adverse consequences for the health, well-being and development of children. Severe deprivations are causally related to ‘poor’ developmental outcomes both long and short term.

11. Percent of the world’s children severely deprived of basic human needs

12. Severe Deprivation of Basic Human Need • Almost a third of the world’s children live in dwellings with more than five people per room or which have a mud floor. • Over half a billion children (27%) have no toilet facilities whatsoever. • Over 400 million children (19%) are using unsafe (open) water sources or have more than a 15-minute walk to water. • About one child in five, aged 3 to 18, lacks access to radio, television, telephone or newspapers at home. • Sixteen percent of children under five years in the world are severely malnourished, almost half of whom are in South Asia. • 275 million children (13%) have not been immunised against any diseases or have had a recent illness causing diarrhoea and have not received any medical advice or treatment. • One child in nine aged between 7 and 18 (over 140 million) are severely educationally deprived - they have never been to school.

13. Absolute Poverty of Children: Rural and Urban Distribution

14. Severe Deprivation of Children by Region

16. Multidimensional Explanations of Child Poverty The explanations of child poverty, although often contested, are nevertheless well known and can be divided into four main groupings for analytical convenience when investigating survey data such as the DHS and MICS; 1) Demographic factors: such as age, gender, number of adults and children, family structure, etc – child poverty can result if there are too few adults compared with the numbers of children to both adequately care for the children and provide sufficient economic resources to prevent poverty. 2) Social Class/Socioeconomic status: such as occupation and educational attainment – child poverty can result from parental occupations with low earnings or a lack of earnings due to unemployment/landlessness 3) Recognition factors: such as ethnicity and religion – child poverty can result due to discrimination against low status ethnicities, religions, etc. 4) Geographic factors: such as rurality, region, etc. Child poverty can result due to a lack of resources in the geographic location. However, geographic location is often a proxy variable for historically contingent factors which cause poverty such a history of war/violence, underdevelopment, etc.

17. Multidimensional Explanations of Child Poverty- Case Study: Namibia Logistic regression results: the most significant ten variables associated with absolute child poverty in Namibia in 2000

19. Conclusions (1) Multidimensional measures of child poverty based on internationally agreed definitions can be produced at a global level using readily available survey data. Multidimensional measures show that over half the children in the World suffer from at least one severe deprivation of basic human need and 30% of the World’s children are absolutely poor. These finding would indicate that the current unidimensional measures of extreme poverty produced by the World Bank (the one dollar a day threshold) may well underestimate the true extent of World poverty. Given the scale and multidimensional nature of absolute child poverty in the World it seems unlikely that poverty can be eradicated quickly unless the issue of child poverty is given a higher priority by governments and international organisations.

20. Conclusions (2) Anti-poverty strategies need to respond to local conditions - blanket solutions for the eradication of child poverty are likely to be unsuccessful given the differences in the extent and nature of severe deprivation between and within developing countries. This research indicates that considerably more emphasis needs to be placed on improving basic infrastructure and social services for families with children, particularly with regards to shelter and sanitation in rural areas. An international investment fund for payment towards national schemes of child benefit in cash or kind would help to provide the impetus for rapid fulfilment of children's fundamental rights to social security and an adequate standard of living.

21. Conclusions (3) Our results for children show that severe deprivation of basic human need for physical capital (e.g. clean water, sanitation, housing) is a more prevalent problem than severe human capital deprivation (e.g. education, health services and malnutrition). This finding has significant policy implications as tackling physical capital problems may be a pre-requisite for successful human capital interventions, e.g. feeding programmes and health and education service interventions will only have limited success if malnutrition and disease is being caused by a lack of sanitation, clean water and squalid housing conditions. Most anti-poverty programmes are currently putting greater resources into tackling human capital problems than physical capital problems – the focus of these efforts may need to be rethought in many parts of the developing world? It may be more effective to improve children’s health and education by building new toilets, better water supplies and housing than by building new hospitals and schools!